


Alchemilla

by HappyLeech



Series: Job Hunt [1]
Category: Silent Hill, Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Alchemilla Hospital, Behind the Scenes, Gen, What the real world people have to deal with when Silent Hill goes to shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 15:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1433005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyLeech/pseuds/HappyLeech
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol is a simple receptionist at Alchemilla Hospital, that's all.<br/>She works night shift, deals with missing keys and phantom children, and<br/>...<br/>well, finds herself a new job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alchemilla

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually part 2...I just happened to write this one first, haha.

Carol first noticed something was wrong when she thought she could hear the sound of footsteps pattering away from the desk. After looking over to Maureen, who was taking a most definitely not approved nap and drooling on her crossword puzzle book, she climbed out of her chair and headed into the office.

“Something wrong?” someone asked, and she turned to Ralph, the night security guard as she entered.

“I thought I heard someone, so I’m going to take a look. It sounded like a kid’s footsteps, and I know we haven’t had any children admitted in the last while.” She explained, before opening the door to the examination room. Or, at least, she tried to.

With a frown, she turned to Ralph. “Did you lock this? Or, rather, can you unlock the door?” She jostled the knob for emphasis, annoyed. Why did people keep locking the important doors?

“Why would I lock the door?” Ralph said, as he stood and reached for his keys. “Let’s see…exam room, exam room…wait. Where’s the key?” As he started patting his pockets, Carol sighed. 

“You lost another key? The director’s going to fire your ass if he finds out.” She said to him in her best “mom-voice”, before turning and returning to the reception area. She’d just jump over the desk instead, and wake Maureen up. Someone needed to be keeping an eye out.

“Hey, hey Maureen.” She shook her co-worker, who sat up with a jolt, eyes wide. “Whoa, just me. Bad dream?”

The other receptionist just nodded, before rubbing her eyes. “I need to stop eating so much junk on the night shift…and no more horror movies for me or Glen. Jesus, it was like I was in the hospital, but…” she shook her head, looking ill, and Carol patted her on the arm. She too knew the pains of horror movie nightmares, although after her stint at Cedar Grove...

She wasn’t going to be blaming movies for her nightmares anymore.

“Yeah…Anyways, I’ll be right back. I thought I heard a kid running around a few minutes ago, and genius in the other room managed to get the examination room door locked and lose the key. If Dr. Kaufmann comes by, could you tell him something came up with Noah and I had to take a phone call?” she asked, sitting up on the counter and swinging her legs around. The quicker she could look around, the quicker she could be back at the desk, doing nothing.

“Sure thing. No guarantee that he’ll believe me though, after that thing with Lisa…” Maureen replied, before shuddering. “Poor kid…wonder where she got to. Haven’t seen her in a while…”

“Maybe she got an ounce of common sense and ran home? Hell, if James and Noah weren’t so in love with this place, I’d be out of this town in a heartbeat.” Carol said with a shrug, before turning the corner to look for the child.

“Hello? Is there someone there?” she called quietly, ignoring the fact that if someone did answer, they’d most likely be a nurse. Or, she’d hope they’d be a nurse. 

Seeing nothing but the glow from the payphones in the dim light, she sighed and reached for the other door to the examination room. This door was locked too, and as Carol turned to leave, annoyed, she could have sworn she heard someone sobbing in the room.

“Hey, are you okay in there?” she asked, pressing her ear to the door, but she couldn’t hear anything else, and reluctantly stepped away after a moment. Things were starting to get creepy…and she didn’t like creepy.

As she continued to the double doors that led to the next section of the hospital, one of the janitors banged through the door, and she jumped backwards. “Jesus! You scared the-“ she caught herself, and shook her head, hand to her chest. “Have you seen anyone, any kids running around?”

“Kids? Carol, there are definitely no kids running around here. ‘Specially not at-“ the janitor, Tori, checked her watch. “-at 1:23 in the morning. Maybe you were just hearing things.”

Carol sighed. She was sure she had heard something… “Yeah, probably. You haven’t seen the key to the examination room, have you? Guess who lost his copy, and guess what room is completely locked.”

Tori grumbled. “Really? Again? You’d think after the reaming out that the doctor gave him after the first time would mean he’d keep-“ Tori would have continued, but it was then that they both heard an enormous crash, and the sound of something or someone thrashing around.

With a look at Tori, Carol pushed through the door, half jogging until she stopped outside of where the noises were coming from. Then she stopped, unsure of what to do. If it had been a normal room, the kitchen or doctor’s offices, she’d have burst in right away. But it was the director’s office, and there were rules about going into Kaufmann’s office without permission. 

But Tori had followed after, and either had no fear of the temperamental doctor, or didn’t care if she was fired, and she pushed open the door. “Doctor?” the janitor called, before reaching in the door of the darkened office and flicking on the overhead light.

It flickered a few times, almost refusing to work, before the light shot on and showed the two of them the trashed office. Tori started to mutter to herself, seeing the mess, before sighing. 

“I’m going to go tell Ralph about this, and then grab my cart. I should probably get this cleaned up…” she said, leaving Carol alone to look into the room. 

Stepping inside, aware that if the doctor came around that she’d be fired at best, and arrested at worse, Carol started to poke around. All the chairs were overturned, drawers ripped out of the desk and books tossed from the shelves. Even his degrees were smashed on the ground, the creamy paper ripped and dirty. Then she walked around the desk, and gasped. 

Broken glass was scattered all over the ground, and something red and sticky had pooled on the floor.

“Hey, so Ralph said he doesn’t have anything on his end, you know how unreliable the cameras are here, so I figured I’ll just clean up and the doctor will be none the wiser, huh Carol? …Carol?” Tori had returned, pushing her cart to the doorway, when she saw Carol’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I…I think this is blood here, Tori. I…I think we need to call the police.” Carol said carefully, tiptoeing her way back to the doorway, knowing enough that she shouldn’t touch any more than she had already. 

But Tori wasn’t so sure. “Call the police? Are you crazy? Kaufmann will have everyone’s hide if we do that. You know how he is.” She hissed.

“Yes, I do. But its blood in his office, and it’s trashed. What if it’s his? I mean, none of us like him much, but what if…” she trailed off, and slowly Tori nodded.

“Right, yeah. Good point. I’ll get Ralph on it, and I guess I won’t touch the office. I, uh, I guess I’ll wait in the waiting room then, for the police.” Tori said, a little reluctantly, and Carol nodded, not really paying attention. She could have sworn she heard the footsteps again…

It took half an hour for the police to arrive, none too pleased to have been pulled from bed to get to the hospital, but the officer’s attitudes changed when she lead them to the office.

“And you haven’t see the doctor all night, Mrs. Cowell?” one of them asked her, having had her sat down on the old and frankly disgusting chairs in the waiting room.

“Not at all. I didn’t even know he was in tonight, but sometimes he just pops up, stops by the desk to make sure we’re not slacking off or anything.” Carol said truthfully, watching as men filed into the hospital. The initial officer had called a few more people once he’d seen the scene, and now the waiting room seemed to be swarming with cops.

“Hmm…” the officer wrote something in his book, before looking to one of the men. He showed him the notebook, and Carol’s stomach clenched. “And, tell me again, why did you leave your post?”

Carol sighed. “I thought I heard footsteps, but I didn’t see anyone. So, I decided to look around, see if there was a patient out of bed. And then I found out that Ralph had lost the key to the examination room again, so I figured I’d take a look around, stretch my legs. And Maureen was here too, so I didn’t think leaving the desk would be an issue.” She had already told the story twice, and she was sure someone was hoping she’d slip up.

“Of course not,” the officer said, motioning her to continue.

“I tried the door there to the examination room, in case that door was unlocked, but I couldn’t get it open. Then I ran into Tori, and we were talking when I heard the noise.” Carol had been about to finish her story, when the alarm bells started to sound. She jumped up with a gasp, and turned to head into the building, but the officer grabbed her arm.  
“What’s the alarm? Where are you going? We’re not finished yet.” He asked, and Carol wrenched her arm away.

“That’s the fire alarm! We have to evacuate the patients right away,” she said with a growl as Ralph vaulted himself over the reception desk. He might not be the best at keeping track of things, but the man knew what to do in an emergency.

“All right!” he yelled, quickly taking charge of the situation. “We have 24 patient in the hospital at this time, including 5 babies and mothers, as well as 12 staff. We need to find and evacuate them immediately, and ensure we have everyone out of the building as soon as possible!” As Carol and Maureen started off to search the first floor, she heard Ralph bark “Now!” at the officers, before they started to scramble after the receptionists. 

“W-what do we do?” one of them asked, grabbing Carol “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but after everyone is safe, moron! Get upstairs, the nurses can tell you what to do!” 

Rushing through the first floor, her and Maureen got everyone they could find who wasn’t part of the evacuation effort out, as the nurses and officers were quickly moving the patients out into the night. Making her way towards the exit because she knew that the nurses and officers had the other floors covered, she paused in front of the examination room. What if there was someone in there…Shouldn’t they try to get them out?

“Come on, Carol! We’ve probably been in here too long anyways…Oh I can feel myself going faint…” Maureen said, pulling her away and out into the night right as Carol was about to knock on the door. 

It was a tense hour and a half, keeping confused patients warm and reassured in the neighbouring building while the firemen combed through the hospital. Finally, they got the all clear to start moving the patients back into the building.

“What happened?” Carol asked one of the firemen as he watched a group of nurses started moving the babies back into the building.

He shook his head. “We’re not quite sure. It looks like there was a fire in the basement, but we can’t seem to find where it started. We found smoke and fire damage in the basement store room, as well as blood in one of the corners though, so we’re sure it was in there, we just can’t find the ignition point.” The firefighter paused, and motioned one of his colleagues to start helping prepare the more elderly patients.

“One of the men also found what could be some kind of concealed door in the room though. There’s signs of fire damage behind a shelf, but we couldn’t force it open because of the damage. The fire seemed to take care of itself though, so we’re going to wait until morning and head down there with the officers.”

He nodded to Carol, and turned away to speak with the officers who was frowning at an elderly patient who was giving him hell for disturbing her sleep. 

As everyone made their way back into the building, given the all-clear, Carol frowned. The basement? How did a fire get started in the basement, when no one was allowed down there at all? And a concealed door? More blood? Did the fire have something to do with the mess of Kaufmann’s office?

The rest of her shift went somewhat normally, or as normal as it could be after their hell of a night, and at the 8 am shift change, oh she was ready to go home. Both she and Maureen had spent the rest of their shift coming up with theories and reasons why everything had gone insane, although Maureen’s ideas had been more outlandish and unrealistic. Aliens and mind control and magic, making Carol shake her head. There was no way that it was something so…stupid. 

“It’s been a night for the books,” she said to Janice as she arrived for her shift, Maureen having headed up to the locker room early. “First Ralph lost the examination room key and the door’s locked, then someone trashed the director’s office and there’s blood on the floor, and then a fire got started in the basement. Everything’s been cleared up, but there’s going to be officers everywhere today.”

“Uhg. Great, just what I need,” Janice rolled her eyes, and Carol suppressed a growl. Janice was young and arrogant and rude, but she was also damn good at her job, and nice to kids when they ended up at the desk. Carol watched as she walked around the corner, and rolled her eyes. Kids.

Then she heard a click, and Janice called back to Carol. “The door’s not locked at all. Were you actually trying or what?” 

Carol frowned, and was about to reply when she heard the sounds of someone being violently ill. Immediately leaping over the desk, she turned the corner to see Janice curled up in a ball, sobbing and wiping her mouth.

The door to the examination room was wide open.

And Carol didn’t think she’d seen so much blood in her life.

\--

_“So, Mrs. Cowell, what made you leave your employment at Alchemilla and seek out a place here at Brookhaven?”_  
 _“…I saw my boss in a new way, and I didn’t like what I saw.”_


End file.
